Solaris Laptop list (x86)

This page is a place to keep track of solaris compatible laptops.
Philip Brown collected this information from newsgroup postings, and
form submissions through the website.
Last update: 2008. Kept around for historical purposes now.

I used to suggest that people contaact me to
add entries for your laptop, but at this point, most
laptops WILL work with solaris.

General Install hints

When installing solaris on a laptop, unless you know everything is
supported, you should probably follow these steps:

Disable everything you wont be using, like parallel ports, etc.

Turn off any "Plug-n-Play OS" BIOS mode

Switch the PCMCIA port to "PCIC mode" if possible

Read any notes specific to your laptop, in the table down below.

(remember to use "cd 1 of 2", not the "installation cd")

Once you are in the installation program, select "bypass" when it
comes to selecting a video card. You'll probably need to install the
Xsun+XFree modules
anyway, and running the install in 16-color mode just
isn't worth it!

AFTER you have everything installed and working, then
on Solaris 8, try

# eeprom ata-dma-enabled=1

and reboot. You'll then have reasonable speed disk access, if your
controller and drive are fully ATA compatible. Otherwise, reset the value
via the DCA at boot-time, by changing boot-properties.

Note on PCMCIA cards

Solaris currently can only use PCMCIA cards in "PCIC" mode, the legacy
mode.
Well, strictly speaking, it can use CardBus mode in some situations, but
only if the "CardBus base address" has been initialized by the bios or some
other means. And even if you do set it by hand, there are other nasties
that basically mean it will only work about 5% of the time.

If you have a Sun "supported" PCMCIA card (listed on
Sun's HCL), but
cannot force your slot to the old mode in the BIOS, you can
try the FREE initpcic patch, from
ftp.xig.com. According to
the README file for it, you may get use out of it if
"prtconf -D | grep pcic" shows something. If so, get the
software, and follow the directions carefully about setting it up.

An alternative is to take a look at the
lynnsoft.com page for
solaris.
They have written various drivers for cards in the new PCMCIA CardBus
mode, under solaris. Unfortunately, the drivers are not free; they run
about $100.
However, there is an impressive range of products they support, above and
beyond the range of cards supported by Sun, including some
802.11b wireless networking cards.

Note on graphics

The latest Xsun patches have "generic VESA/SVGA" support.
(patch 109401), so it should work with almost any video card.
You can also tweak it to support 1400x1050

For support for Dell's new super-hi-res screens (nv based), you can
try just pkgadd -d DELLwxga.pkg, and then
selecting one of the "Dell W*XGA" LCD Monitors from kdmconfig.

For a wider general range of card suport from Xsun, you may want to install
the
xfree86 'porting' kit from Sun.
Despite its 'porting kit' name, it actually comes with compiled binaries that are
plug-n-go, for any card that xfree4.2.0 supports. You can also get a patch
for suns patch, to better support some ATI cards, from
Juergen Keil's site

Unfortunately, the support is
not 100% perfect: using a geforce2 with the kit will display most things,
but certain very rare apps will have corrupted graphics (As of Dec 14,
2001). Unfortunately, one of these "rare apps" is Netscape 6.1, but the
good news is, you can allegedly work around this issue by calling it with
--no-xshm

FIX for solaris 9 x86: install patch 112786

Another option is XiG's commercial X server. XiG'd drivers support a few
cards that xfree does not. Their drivers are production quality, and if you
pay a little extra, you can get 3d acceleration for your laptop, too.

Note on ethernet cards

Try to get an Intel one, either built-in, or through a "miniPCI" board.
Solaris has excellent support for just about any intel NIC. All others are
hit-or-miss whether they are supported.

If you are pretty sure you have an intel-compatible card, but dont know
what ID to put in, then use my
prtdev utility, to find a PCI ID for your
ethernet controller that looks like 8086,xxxx. You'll be looking for the
"True VendorID/DeviceID" information.

As a last resort, you can try some third-party free drivers for on-board
ethernet and PCMCIA cards:

How do you get the drivers on the box, if you dont have a working ethernet
port? The easiest way is via floppy after the OS install, if you have one.
An alternative is to use a modem to dial in to an ISP and download them
"directly". Or, use the serial port with a null-modem adapter to get them
"indirectly", from another local computer. You'll probably want to
connect to another unix box, and use "tip", to get a uuencoded version
of the neccessary archive. See elsewhere for directions on using tip.

Note on sound cards

Note on docking stations

Usually, solaris will be able to see devices on the "other side" of a
docking station, but sometimes, it does not initially know about it.
You may be able to solve this problem by adding the appropriate entry to
/etc/driver_aliases. One entry that has been
reported to be useful, is

pci_pci "pci104c,ac22"

If that does not work, you can attempt to find a more appropriate value
by doing the following:

When your laptop is not in the docking status, run
"prtconf -D > /tmp/pre-dock "

When your laptop is IN the docking status, run
"prtconf -D > /tmp/post-dock "

Run " diff /tmp/pre-dock /tmp/post-dock"

This should give you a candidate or two to try for editing and using the
example pci_pci line, above.

Installing via serial port

If you are having extreme difficulty with your video card (or keyboard)
during the install, and you know there is a patch for it once you have the
OS installed, you may choose to try installing via a terminal on the
serial port. Details for this are included in
this file

Last ditch install plan

If for some reason, you "have to" install solaris on a particular
laptop that does not have a boot-supported cdrom or ethernet device, a
final option is to use vmware. It has been reported that you can install
vmware on linux or ms-windows, and configure vmware to give
the upcoming solaris install access to a (f)disk partition, and access to
the MBR. You also need to configure vmware to present a CD ISO image as
a cdrom drive. Once all this is done, you can install solaris within
vmware. [Within vmware, boot off the fake cdrom drive, and run the
install to the fdisk partition designated above].
Once that is accomplished, you can reboot the "real" machine, and
boot into solaris directly, without going through linux or vmware.
You may not have access to the cdrom or network device.. but you'll have
solaris on the laptop :-}
[presuming that the internal hard drive is scsi or ATA attached.]

Tweaking iprb from cdrom

If you find yourself with only a CDROM, no floppy, no install on hard
drive, a non-standard iprb pci-ID, but but you *need* access to
the network [eg: you want to install a flash archive over the
net], you can use the following hack proceedure, presuming the pci id for
your adapter is compatible with pci8086,1031:

boot to cdrom "normally", but exit install when you get the chance

mkdir /tmp/overlay

cd /etc ; tar cf - . | (cd /tmp/overlay; tar xf -)

cd / ; mount -F lofs /tmp/overlay /etc

rem_drv iprb (This wil remove ALL iprb entries from driver_aliases

add_drv -i pci8086,1031 iprb

You should now be able to do "ifconfig iprb0 plumb", etc.
I have used this trick to do a flash install over the network by running
"suninstall" by hand after configuring the interface appropriately.

The slow alternative method for no-floppy, would be to do a core install,
edit /boot/solaris/devicedb/master and /etc/driver_aliases, reboot, and
use the DCA **on the local disk** to then do a full jumpstart over the network.
[You'll want to go into "Boot tasks" and set boot strategy to RARP though]

In theory, there might be a way to get PXEboot to work, if your laptop
supports it. But it is waaay complex to setup, and I dont know of anyone
in the field who has suceeded in setting it up on a non-supported ethernet
device.

Hibernation/Suspend mode

Some laptops have a "suspend" or "hibernate" mode that will actually
partially work with solaris. The trouble is that some of the drivers may
need resetting.
Youri Podchosov has made a
hibernation script
that can be manually run, to
get around the effects of this. Note that it needs to be customized for
your praticular laptop.

Extra Goodies!

FYI, if you want an easy way to install tons and tons of extra software,
go to http://www.opencsw.org. It
makes use of pkg-get, the
best tool to automatically download and install binary packages for
solaris. As of Oct 2008, it has over 1800 packages for you to choose from.

USB deadly!
To install, must boot from adjusted network install.
Make a net install server, and edit
[...]/Solaris_8/Tools/Boot/etc/driver_aliases to comment out uhci.
Once the install has run, with *manual reboot* set,
make sure to comment out /etc/driver_aliases before rebooting. eg:
# mount -F ufs /dev/dsk/c0d0s0 /mnt
# vi /mnt/etc/driver_aliases

This is a very difficult install currently
Has keyboard problems: use USB keyboard for initial install,
or see
computing.net
for a long workaround. Either way,
install
Dell keyboard patch 112352
Disable "lan control" in BIOS before install

You MUST install via PXE, and tweak devicedb to get it recognized.
[ pci14e4,165d ]
The cdrom is an external dongly thing that is not usable in solaris.
You will also want to install the latest
broadcom
drivers to your boot area (pkgadd -R /nfs/boot/path) to get the latest
bcme drivers for it. You will also have to NOT auto-reboot after install,
but copy the BRCMbcme.pkg file to /a, and the pkgadd it after reboot.
[For some reason, the postinstall script does not seem to work properly
with pkgadd -R /a ]

(This may be same as above)
USB works
NIC works with sol10 broadcom drivers.
1920x1200 graphics usable, with nvidia drivers from nvidia.com. a
walkthrough is available.
Also, details on
1920x1200 mode
User advises adding in all latest patches via "smpatch update"

Dell Latitude D810

10

Xsun, XF86-RADEON
(ATI Mobility Radeon X600)

Broadcom Gigabit 5705m.

USB works
video works up to 1920x1200
Sound not found to work yet (intel 915pm)
[latest bfe0 drivers MIGHT work. otherwise,
get drivers for ethernet, from
http://www.broadcom.com
]

Dell Precision M60

9

Xsun+xfree86, XF86-NV
(NVidia Quadro FX 700go, 1920x1200)

Broadcom

USB works
For clarity, set bios to not scale graphics, since XF86-NV "only" goes up to
1600x1200
Get drivers for ethernet, from
http://www.broadcom.com

Cannot install directly! Must swap HD to different laptop!.
Remember to install the ethernet drivers from
www.realtek.com.tw before swapping HD back. Then you should have no
problems. Sound works with third-party
audioi810 drivers
USB works.

USB works.
Follow these workarounds for install:
In BIOS, PCI INT IRQs should be (A=3, B=4, C=5, D=7)
In initial bluescreen probing, go into "Device Tasks" before the full OS
comes up from CDROM, and remove the "PNP0C01 ACPI" device

Sol8 FCS can only install via net-install.
Sol9 still needs cold reboot instead of ctl-alt-del.
Problems with resuming after "suspend", so disable it.
If you use xorgconfig, select "savage" driver.

IBM ThinkPad T22

8,9

Xsun+Xfree86, XF86-SAVAGE
(S3 Savage IX)

BUILT-IN Intel NIC!

IBM ThinkPad T23

8,9

Xsun+Xfree86, XF86-SAVAGE
(S3 Savage IX)

BUILT-IN Intel NIC!

Add iprb "pci8086,1031" to /etc/driver_aliases, touch
/reconfigure, and reboot.
Disable "suspend" on LCD close in BIOS for best use.
Optional CD-RW works.
Sound works only intermittently, with
audioi810 drivers
See notes on PCMCIA

IBM ThinkPad T30

8,9

Xsun
VESA (or XF86-ATI with porting kit)
(ATI Mobility Radeon 7500)

Built-in Intel nic, needs tweak

USB works
Add iprb "pci8086,1031" to /etc/driver_aliases, touch
/reconfigure, and reboot.
Sound works with
audioi810 drivers
See 1400x1050 screen tweak. Note that if
you have the R7200 video card model, this may not work for you.

IBM ThinkPad T31

8

Xsun+Xfree86
use XF86-ATI
(ATI Mobility Radeon 7500)

Built-in Intel nic, needs tweak

Add iprb "pci8086,1031" to /etc/driver_aliases, touch
/reconfigure, and reboot.
Sound works with
audioi810 drivers
usb does work

IBM ThinkPad T31

8

Xsun+Xfree86
use XF86-ATI
(ATI Mobility Radeon)

Built-in Intel nic, needs tweak

Add iprb "pci8086,1031" to /etc/driver_aliases, touch
/reconfigure, and reboot.
Disable suspend on LCD close, in BIOS.
usb does not work

IBM ThinkPad T40

9

Xsun+Xfree86
use XF86-VESA
(ATI Mobility Radeon 7500, or 9000)

Built-in Intel nic, needs tweak

Add iprb "pci8086,103d" to /etc/driver_aliases for NIC.
Note that it may be iprb1, not 0
Alternatively, if you have the gigabit ether, then
add e1000g "pci8086,101e" to /etc/driver_aliases and
use e1000g0 instead of iprb0
USB works.
Sound works with
Juergen's drivers

IBM ThinkPad T42

8

Xsun+Xfree86
use XF86-VESA
(ATI Mobility Radeon)

Built-in Intel gige nic

Download e1000g driver from intel if using 8.
The driver in sol9 will probably work as is -
add e1000g "pci8086,101e" to /etc/driver_aliases and
use e1000g0 instead of iprb0
USB works.

IBM ThinkPad T42p

10

Xsun+Xfree86
autodetect
(ATI Mobility Fire XL)

Built-in Intel gige nic

USB works. audioi810 works. e1000g ethernet works out of the box with
S10

IBM ThinkPad T43 (??)

10

(sun)Xorg+patch 118966-03
autodetect (ati)
(ATI Mobility Radeon x300)

Broadcom nic

USB works. audioi810 works, after adding
audio810 "pci8086,266e"
to /etc/driver_aliases
DVD burner works.
Patch 117966-03 for full video res, for T43 2687-D3U
Apply sun patch 120082-07 to get bge to work in sol10.
Otherwise, get drivers for ethernet, from
http://www.broadcom.com
usb works
wifi driver (iwi) in OpenSolaris works, if you replace
e1000g "pci8086,1010" with iwi "pci8086,4224"
in /etc/driver_aliases.
eeprom atapi-cd-dma-enabled=1 works well with cdrom drive.
More info at William's T43
page

(USB does not work in FCS, only solaris express).
audioi810 works, after adding
audio810 "pci8086,266e"
to /etc/driver_aliases
Apply sun patch 120082-01 to get bge to work in sol10.
Otherwise, get drivers for ethernet, from
http://www.broadcom.com

Booting from cdrom may take a few MINUTES longer than normal
USB WORKS
Sound works with free
audio drivers
Internal mouse can only use 2 buttons with Xsun
PROBLEMS with rebooting: when machine beeps, use "force reset" button
Thanks to
Andrew Forsberg

Toshiba Tecra 8000

8

Xsun+Xfree86
(NeoMagic NM2070..NM2160 selected)

3Com 3CX3589EC PCMCIA

CDROM must be in INTERNAL bay
Set PCMCIA card mode to PCIC, and remove during install.
Turn off PnP for everything. Screen mode set to Stretch.

You will have to disable the parallel port to use PCMCIA
If you have ata-dma-enabled=1, you must cold-boot every time, or
the machine will lock up on you.
See Bug ID: 4429794 reguarding disk DMA

Toshiba Tecra 8100 with DVD-rom

8,9

Xsun+Xfree, or Xig
XF86-S3SAVAGE
(S3 Savage MX graphics)

3Com 3C589C PCMCIA with Xig patch

USB works
If you have ata-dma-enabled=1, you must cold-boot every time, or
the machine will lock up on you.
See Bug ID: 4429794 reguarding disk DMA
Make sure to have BIOS rev 2.50 or higher for best video
Disable parallel port for PCMCIA to be available

May have to disable CPU Cache in BIOS to do Solaris 8 install.
You must cold-boot or hard-reset every time you reboot, or
the machine will lock up on you.
Needs patch 111187 for older sol8 to use NIC
Can burn CDs with cdrecord!
USB works.

Toshiba Tecra 9000

8

Xsun+Xfree86 Kit
(S3 Savage entry)

built-in Intel NIC (needs entry added)

add iprb "pci8086,1031" to /etc/driver_aliases

Toshiba Tecra 9100

9

Xsun+Xfree86, XF86-Savage
(S3 Savage 4)

built-in Intel NIC (needs entry added)

add iprb "pci8086,1031" to /etc/driver_aliases
To get USB working, add all of the following to /etc/driver_aliases

usba "pci8086,2482"
usba "pci8086,2484"
usba "pci8086,2487"

(note: this may be an error: you may need "uhci" instead of "usba". )

Toshiba Tecra S1
(PT831E-14UQG-GR)

9

Xsun VESA
(ATI Mobility Radeon 9000)

built-in Intel NIC (needs entry added)

add iprb "pci8086,103d" to /etc/driver_aliases
Solaris works with USB controller.
Must boot from USB floppy, to install(presumably set to "legacy mode")

A listing of a laptop in a particular configuration/solaris version
does not neccessarily mean it is the ONLY way to get it working.
A listing simply means that someone has emailed me that this specific config
does actually work.

Along those lines, if you have some more information about an existing
entry, PLEASE EMAIL ME!